Ever notice how freaking fast life zips by us? We get so hung up on the daily grind: get up, get dressed, put on your makeup, slam down breakfast and run out the door, grind out 8 hours (or more) at a J.O.B., fight traffic getting home, hurry through dinner, rush the kids to activities, zone out for an hour or two in front of the t.v. and then crash, hard, in bed (if you're lucky to have made it that far).
If you're lucky, you'll do this routine, with a few vacations, day after day after day for 40 or 50 years. Finally retiring to enjoy "the good life" with your spouse, kids, friends, grandkids... If you're one of the lucky ones. If not, you'll crash like an old workhorse that dies in his traces, dropping like a stone, spending the last few moments of your life thinking about all the things you still wanted to do but never got around to.
Or, you're one of the many, like me, who worked hard for 15 or 20 years, only to slowly degrade over a short period of time, your health something you're constantly reaching for, and finding more and more, every day, that it's further out of reach. Your blood pressure goes up, you get sick easily, you can't think anymore for the constant, horrible pain you're in every. passing. minute.
And then, you have to walk away from everything you've known, and kiss your financial security and work-life goodbye. You find yourself cut off from the world, barely making ends meet (if you're lucky and have some reserves) while you scramble through the exhausting process of getting help.
You start looking at those posts on social media about people on disability and state assistance in a different light. You are no longer on the bandwagon that lumps everyone into the "lazy" category for being out of work. You're not lazy, after all. You're just trying to survive and deal with the constant pain and fatigue that your life is now enveloped in. You just want to know that you'll have enough to cover rent and some food for your kid.
You're not taking vacations anymore-there's no money for getting away, and even if you could afford it, you don't have a job to get away from anymore, and there is no getting away from the constant pain and fatigue you live with.
You realize that your entire life has been redefined. No longer do you define yourself by your job skills, or the excellence with which you execute your job duties. No longer is your worth defined by your annual salary or your tax bracket. Now, your life is defined by the moments you can get past the pain just long enough to enjoy your daughter's kindergarten drawings and listen to the song she's made up for her writing assignment. You count time in doses of medication and how many days you have to feel up to going out to get your refills.
You don't worry about make up anymore, because you now spend an hour trying to get ready, and look "normal" enough to go to the post office. You've learned to mask the intense pain your life is soaked in now. "How are you doing today?" is no longer a blithely answered question; do I tell the truth, or pretend? And if I pretend long enough, will I have to explain to this person at some point that I really am not okay? You've learned, on a deep, personal level, what "invisible illnesses" really are.
And then, one day, you start dreaming again. You start looking at life through the lens of what you've lost, and what you wish you still had. Life has taken on a whole new meaning for you, and you see what you would be missing now, had you never lost all that other stuff. But on some other level, you miss the normality, the consistency of that old life.
There are days I really miss knowing what day of the week it is based on what's going on at work. I miss showing up, making the coffee, going through my day, planning for the weekend. I miss the regular paycheck that came more than once a month, and having money to put in savings and being able to buy clothes when we need them instead of having to plan 3 months in advance to buy a single pair of shoes.
I miss the security of having a job and the health to maintain that job. I came to grips with that last year, and decided that it was time to start slowly working towards some resolution to that situation. We homeschool our daughter, and that's helped somewhat with the regular routine that a job used to provide, but that doesn't pay the bills and allow for savings.
We've made a lot of progress toward some of our financial goals this year, but there's a long way to go yet. I might miss my old life at times, but then... I turn around, and look at what I do have instead of that, and I'm filled with overwhelming gratitude that I have all this other stuff in it's place.
How about you? What do you miss? Jump in the comments below and share, or hop over to the Facebook page to share. If you're a blogger, or thinking of starting a blog and want some fun topics to help you get going, feel free to use this challenge for yourself. I ask just two things if you do. First, use this material ethically - cite your sources, and share credit where credit is due. Second, let me know you're doing this challenge, too, so we can all share in your journey!
Enjoying this series? If you'd like to read this series from the beginning, hop over here to the Intro.
Until the next time, Live Large, Lovelies! Muah xoxoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment